


hold me tight

by hollimichele



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1436017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollimichele/pseuds/hollimichele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the old days, before the war, Steve got cold at night. That was all it was, at first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. hold me tight

In the old days, before the war, Steve got cold at night. That was all it was, at first.

There were two narrow beds in the apartment they shared, but it was Bucky’s Steve would climb into eventually, most nights between October and April. He’d let Bucky sling an arm over him while Bucky grumbled about Steve’s perpetually cold feet, and after a while Steve only put up a token protest about it.

“You really don’t have to, you know,” he’d say when Bucky chivvied him under the covers.

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky would answer. “But I’m a hell of a lot better than a hot water bottle, ain’t I?” And anyway they’d long since piled every quilt and blanket they owned on the one bed.

Bucky was too chicken to admit there was more to it than that. He’d never say out loud that he liked having Steve in his arms, back to chest, liked waking up with his nose pressed to the close-cropped hair at the nape of Steve’s neck. He’d have gone to his grave without saying a word about that, about wanting more, but he was, in some ways, a lucky bastard, and anyway, Steve had always been the brave one.

So one night Bucky woke out of some half-remembered dream with a hard-on-- not for the first time-- and eased his hips away from Steve’s ass as carefully as he knew how. Not carefully enough, though, because Steve shifted in his arms, and then tensed up just long enough to make Bucky panic, and then turned over. His hair was mussed, he was bleary with sleep, but Bucky could see in his eyes that he’d figured it out.

“Steve, I--” Bucky started, trying to pick an excuse and failing.

“Jesus, Buck,” murmured Steve, “You coulda said.” And he kissed Bucky, just like that, his mouth warm and soft and perfect beyond any fevered dream Bucky could recall.

Things escalated quickly, from there, and it wasn’t long before Bucky was flat on his back, Steve on top of him, mouthing at his throat and grinding their hips together. Bucky tipped his head back and breathed hard, bit his lip, tried to keep quiet. He ran his hands up Steve’s sides, down to his ass, overwhelmed that he finally had permission to touch like he’d been wanting to since forever.

After, they lay in a sweaty heap, blankets half off the bed. Steve looked up at him, a cat-got-the-canary grin on his face, and pushed Bucky’s damp hair off his forehead. Then he looked away, the grin fading, and Bucky remembered that Steve was good at bravado but it didn’t mean he never got scared.

“You don’t have to-- I mean, this doesn’t have to be--” Steve began, but Bucky cut him off with another kiss. He might not have been brave enough to make the first move, but he was sure of Steve; he always had been.

“Yeah, it does,” he said, and Steve lit up like Christmas. Bucky tugged Steve onto his side, his back to Bucky’s chest, and resettled the blankets over them. Instead of a careless arm flung over Steve, Bucky held him close, pressed his chin into Steve’s thin shoulder without the excuse of having done it in his sleep. He didn’t have to pretend, now, and his heart was light with the knowledge that he never would again.

Then the war came.

At the front, it seemed like he was always cold. It wasn’t uncommon for soldiers to sleep pressed together in a bivouac, sharing heat. Less common, but not unknown, was for soldiers to use that as a cover for something else that no one talked about. Bucky didn’t do either. He’d never been much good at making friends, besides the one that counted, and he couldn't help but be aware that anyone he met might be dead tomorrow. He could live with the cold.

For the first little while after he was captured, he shared a cell with a bunch of fellas who weren’t too proud to admit they were half-frozen, and fair enough to make a rota for who got to sleep in the middle each night. Bucky wasn’t too proud either, by then. But the day came that he got taken away, to wherever men went and didn’t come back from, and he figured that would be it for him. He didn’t count on Steve; he should have.

He’d mostly gotten used to his hands being numb, when Steve ripped the straps free. It was well over a day later that the feeling started to come back, after the first desperate flight from the Hydra factory. They’d made camp for the night, after marching all that day. Bucky was warming his hands in front of a small, smokeless fire for what felt like the first time in forever, and that’s when he started to shake.

“Bucky?” Steve said, because he’d noticed, of course. “You okay?”

“Y-yeah,” Bucky said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“Aw, Buck,” Steve said, and for all that his body was strange and new, that tone of voice hadn’t changed a bit. “When was the last time you slept?”

“D-don’t reme-mem-ber,” Bucky managed, but the shakes in his hands were starting to catch up with the rest of him. The time he’d spent on Zola’s table was starting to catch up with the rest of him, and he needed that to happen somewhere Steve couldn’t see.

But Steve was stubborn at any size, and to make it worse one of the few surviving lieutenants said “When’d you last sleep, for that matter, Cap?”

So Steve hustled Bucky to one of the makeshift tents they’d put up, though he protested that those were for men worse off than him. “Give it a rest, huh?” Steve said, pushing him into the tent, and it was strange as hell that Steve could push, now, and Bucky went whether he liked it or not. “And get some rest, for God’s sake, you’re gonna need it.”

But he couldn’t stop shaking, even once he was lying down. He crossed his arms tight over his chest, curled up on his side and tried to lie still, tried not to show how bad it was. Once Steve was gone he could lose his shit in peace, he decided.

Steve, of course, wasn’t going to let him. “C’mere,” he said, dropping to the ground beside him, reeling Bucky in with one big hand.

Lying there with Steve’s new body pressed up against his back, big arms folded around him, Bucky found he was warm, properly warm, for just about the first time since he’d shipped out. He still shook, but it wasn’t as bad, and Steve didn’t even budge.

“Hell of a lot better than a hot water bottle, ain’t I?” Steve murmured into the back of Bucky’s neck, and Bucky managed a laugh-- a small one, and brittle, but real enough that he felt Steve smile in response.

“Bet your f-feet don’t get cold no more, either,” he answered.

They didn’t, so far as Bucky could tell. Not that they got much time alone, once they made it back, between missions and meetings and Agent Carter’s knowing gaze. She was the only person besides Bucky who seemed to see Steve truly for the man he’d always been. Bucky thought about stepping back and letting her step up, giving Steve the all-clear to take what Bucky couldn’t give him; he even tried to do it, but he only got the first few halting words out before Steve stopped him.

“Peggy’s swell, don’t get me wrong,” he said, and Bucky looked away, only really hearing the first part. They’d gotten a rare night of leave, had holed up in Steve’s quarters under the pretense of mission planning, and were discovering that they didn’t fit into a bed quite so well as they once had. Steve’s feet hung off the end of the mattress, and Bucky was pretty sure he was elbowing Steve in the ribs a little; it was that or fall off. But Steve didn’t seem to mind, or much notice Bucky’s attempt to do the decent thing. “She’s swell, but she’s not you.”

Bucky looked up, meeting Steve’s even, open gaze. “It’s no kind of life, though,” he said. “You two could get married, have kids--”

“And leave you out in the cold? Hell, no,” Steve said. “It’d be-- dishonest, is what it’d be. I couldn’t do that.”

“You like her, though,” Bucky said. He was sure of Steve, that wasn’t the question, but he was used to being the only one who Steve was sure of in turn. It was low of him to begrudge Steve that, but he couldn’t keep the sour feeling in his belly out of his voice.

“I like a lot of people,” Steve said. “But I like you best.”

It was as close as either of them had ever got to a declaration. They both knew what their odds were, always had: Steve’s, of living to see forty, for starters, though that was looking up. Still, they had a better chance of keeping their secret if they never said too much. So Bucky kissed him instead, graceless, hungry, and hoped Steve read in it what he wanted to say out loud.

The train came not long after that, not long enough at all. From there his memories grew patchy, all bloodstained piecemeal fragments, and they were the Soldier’s memories, not those of whatever man he’d been before. All he knew was how to throw a knife, how to field-strip a gun, the name of his next target; what little there was echoed in the emptiness where memories might once have been.

They never gave him enough time to come out of it before they scrambled his brain again-- not the Russians, and not the ones who came after. They took anything he managed to claw back, over and over, until he grew resigned to it, until he expected it. Until he stopped fighting anyone he hadn’t been ordered to fight.

But he knew Captain America, when he saw him, and he didn’t know why. He saved him, and he didn’t know why.

It rattled in his empty head, through the spaces where memories should have been, after he left the Captain on the riverbank. The Captain had acted like he knew him. Like he was someone who could be known, and not a shell to be filled up with orders. Not a weapon. 

There was a forgotten Hydra safehouse in an apartment building in Anacostia, and for the first few weeks he holed up there, living off the expired cans and dusty dry goods it had been stocked with. With his shoulder reset, and the worst of his injuries bandaged, he spent most of his time in an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

And then, after a while, it wasn’t dreamless.

He woke with a sense-memory in his head, a dream that felt as real as anything he could remember. It had been so vivid it took him a few moments to understand that it had been a dream at all, that there hadn’t been someone sleeping pressed up against his back a moment ago. But he swept the apartment, and it was still empty, and the locks showed no signs of tampering.

Even that took a lot out of him-- he was shamefully weak, between the dislocated shoulder and the blood loss and the rest of it-- and he lay back down on the bed once he was sure the safehouse was still secure. He curled up on his side, tried to rest, and found that even with every blanket in the place piled on him he still felt cold. But there was no warm body with an arm folded around him, no soft huff of breath on the nape of his neck, and there likely never had been. Who could he have ever allowed to curl protectively around him like that? And who would ever want to?

The dreams didn’t stop, though. He dreamed about assassinations, about street-to-street fighting, about watching people through his sniper’s scope. And he dreamed about sitting around a campfire with uniformed men, about pressing bandages to a bleeding comrade’s shoulder, about sitting in a bar and singing soldiers’ songs he couldn’t recall the words to upon waking. He dreamed about walking through the streets of a city with someone at his side, close enough that they bumped shoulders occasionally, but in the dream he never turned to see the person’s face.

He didn’t know what to do with any of it. There was still so much blankness in his head; even if he had events, here and there, things he’d been present for, they flickered like a newsreel, stripped of color and feeling.

When he dreamed about the Captain, though, it _hurt_.

In the dream, the Captain was rescuing him. From what, he wasn’t sure, but he knew the relief that it was over, and the shock and confusion of seeing the Captain so different from-- something. Whatever he’d been before. He felt the burn of muscles that hadn’t been used enough lately, and the rasp in his throat from breathing smoke, and under all of it a sort of giddy, disbelieving joy.

He felt the sickening lurch of the girder under his feet, and the rough metal of the railing as he scrambled over it. And then he felt the words leave his mouth, out of a throat that had screamed itself raw only recently-- _not without you_ \--

And then he woke, his head throbbing. He stumbled his way to the bathroom and retched. When it passed, he slumped to the cool tile floor, and tried to steady his breathing.

It hurt, remembering what it was like to feel. But it had hurt more to be made to forget. He could bear it. He wanted to.

And he wanted answers. If he’d really known the Captain once, in another life, maybe there were some to be had.

The museum was a risk, he knew. He wasn’t sure who was left to track him down, if there was anyone looking or if he’d been assumed dead by whatever remained of Hydra. Showing his face so publically was dangerous. But he didn’t mind the fear churning in his gut as he walked towards the exhibit. It was better than feeling nothing at all.

Walking in, he studied the images of the Captain. The paintings weren’t quite right, somehow-- somehow, he knew that the man had never steeled his jaw and gazed into the middle distance like that, not in real life. The photos, though-- those sparked something. He stared at skinny Steve Rogers in black and white, looking breathless and winded, and he found there was a color version of that image in his head, or something very like it. He found that he knew that face, that there was a living memory in him of that face in any number of manners and expressions.

That was almost enough; he could very well have held that knowledge tight and left, his mission accomplished. Then he rounded the corner and found himself, staring back at him.

Bucky Barnes was born in 1917 and, after being rescued by Captain America from a POW camp in Italy, joined him in taking out Hydra bases across Europe. He was listed as MIA in 1944, and eventually declared dead. He was from Brooklyn, and had known Steve Rogers all his life.

He stood there for a long time, reading and rereading, letting the words throw up sparks of memory in his head. Then he went through the rest of the exhibit, painstakingly reading each label. Some of them just echoed off the blank spaces-- the size small Army uniform, the wedding photograph of Sarah and Joseph Rogers-- but some of them made things lock into place, bits of his past connecting and rearranging into larger, truer pictures.

He remembered the smell of Dugan’s cigars, and the way Jaques and Gabe used to murmur to each other in French. He remembered the shelf of cheap sketchbooks Steve had filled, one after another-- most, the exhibit informed him, now in the hands of private collectors. He remembered a narrow bed in a walk-up apartment, and how he and Steve had fit into it, his arms around Steve’s skinny frame.

He stumbled out of the museum hours later, filled with wild relief. With the knowledge that he hadn’t always been a weapon. But there was a lot of blank space left, and he wanted it filled, wanted to know what belonged there.

He should have known to be careful what he wished for.

The museum seemed to have unlocked a floodgate, somewhere in his brain. Over the next few nights he dreamed vividly, woke up with more and more of the empty spaces in his head filled up, and none of it was with anything good.

His head brimmed with the Winter Soldier’s history, the death and pain he’d caused. He remembered every time the chair had tipped back to empty him out, every time they’d swung the door shut on the cryo chamber, consigning him to the cold and dark. He remembered being made into a weapon, and how that weapon had been used.

When he closed his eyes he saw red, all the blood he’d spilled, all the lives he’d ended. There was an ocean of it, almost too broad to see across. On the far side, he knew, there was a childhood, a real life, an apartment in Brooklyn with all the blankets piled on one bed, but that was all so distant it might as well have never existed.

He lost track of time, for a little while, adrift in that sea. If the Widow hadn’t found him, he might have stayed that way.

One night, he shuddered out of a nightmare and into waking, which wasn’t much better, and the Black Widow was sitting on the end of the bed.

“Steve’s gonna be pissed I found you first,” she said conversationally. He scrambled back and away, reaching under his pillow for the nearest gun to hand. The Widow raised her own hands, leaning back a little. “Easy,” she said. “It’s okay.”

He had to laugh at that, though it came out hoarse and cracked. “It’s really not,” he said, but he lowered the gun. “What do you want?”

She shrugged, deliberately. He got the feeling she did everything deliberately. “If I could find you, other people might too, if not as quickly,” she said. “Figured you could use the heads-up.”

“Why?” She didn’t owe him anything. She had no reason to want to help.

“Well, Steve would be upset if anything happened to you,” she said. “He’s got this nutty idea that you’re his best friend, and he needs to find you, or save you, or something. He’s been on about it kind of a lot lately, actually.”

Bucky pressed his eyes shut. He’d hardly thought about Steve for a while; hadn’t been able to see past the rest of it to him. “Steve’s an idiot,” he said.

“Well, you’d know better than me,” Natasha said. “If he’s right about you.”

It was hard to focus. “You said he’s looking for me?” he asked.

“Yeah. He twigged to your museum visit, so it’s probably a matter of time ‘til he finds you here. If you’re here to be found.”

“Fuck,” he said, and swiped a hand across his face, trying to think straight. “I can’t-- he’s not-- he’s wrong about me.”

“Is he?” She sounded curious. “You pulled him out of the river, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” He tried to focus on that: on Steve’s slack face, his closed eyes, the way he’d watched Steve breathe for a long moment before he’d turned away. That made it a little easier, remembering that even as the Soldier he’d known enough to save Steve. “I did.”

The Widow was still watching him. “So you remember him.”

“I do now. Some, anyway.”

“You going to let him find you?”

Part of him wanted to. Most of him, to be honest. But he wasn’t safe, not yet, maybe not ever. He didn’t know what was still in his head, if he could protect Steve from it. “He’s better off without me.”

“You sure about that?” the Widow asked. “He’s been telling me stories about you for as long as I’ve known him. About how you always had his back. You’ve got a considerably broader skillset than you did then; you think he couldn’t use you on his six, with all those Hydra operatives still at large?”

“I think if he ever trusts me on his six, he’s an idiot,” Bucky said.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ve found he’s usually right where it counts, though.” She smirked. “Plus, he’s been awfully mopey lately. No fun at all.”

“Why do you care?” he asked. It was, to his surprise, easier to think with someone else in the room to focus on. 

“He’s a friend,” she said, as if it was simple as that. “And I owe him. I like to pay my debts.”

“Yeah, well, some of us are a little too far in the red for that,” he said, staring down at his hands.

“You think I’m not?” she asked. He looked up, startled. “Look, I’m not going to say I had it worse than you. But I know what it’s like to be made into someone else’s weapon against your will. And I know what’s on the other side of that.”

“Which is?” Bucky asked.

“A chance to find out if you’re a person, instead of a weapon,” Natasha said. “And what kind of person you might be.”

“Sounds nice,” he said.

“Better than the alternative,” she replied. “Which is wallowing in self-pity ‘til someone puts you out of your misery, and never doing a thing about your balance sheet.”

He was silent for a while, before he spoke. “Tell me where Steve is,” he said.

Steve was sharing a row house with Sam Wilson, off Georgia Avenue a little south of Walter Reed. Bucky had murdered a family in their beds a few blocks away, in the early eighties. He pushed that to the back of his head, though, and lay on the roof of the house opposite so he could look in the upstairs windows.

Through the window, he could see Steve sitting at a desk, his head bent over a cheap sketchbook. His shoulders were hunched up, and Bucky could remember him sitting just that way for hours, when they were narrower shoulders, at the table in their apartment with a wad of paper under one leg to keep it from wobbling. He always gave himself a stiff neck, doing that. Bucky saw him uncurl briefly, to stretch his arms over his head and rub the back of his neck, before turning his attention back to whatever he was drawing. 

Bucky let himself down the drainpipe, and crossed the street, and stood in front of the door for a long time. He raised his hand to knock, lowered it, and raised it again. He turned and walked back up the front path, and only got three steps before he turned back to the door again.

“Fuck,” he said, and gave in. He pounded on the door with his metal hand, and even gloved it echoed too-loud down the dark, quiet street.

He heard footsteps approaching the door, and went tense. It opened, and he went tenser. Sam Wilson stood there, a roll of cash in his hand. He froze. “You’re not the pizza guy,” he said.

Bucky shook his head.

“Sam, was that the--” Steve said, and then added “--pizza,” faintly, before he pushed past Sam to fling the screen door open.

“Whoa, Steve, hold on a minute--” Sam began, but he trailed off when Steve skidded to a halt in front of Bucky.

“Bucky?” Steve said. Bucky didn’t remember Steve showing so much on his face, before. He didn’t think he knew how to feel as many things as what he watched play across Steve’s face-- the hope he was trying to rein in, the wariness, the plain relief.

“Steve,” he managed to say.

“You-- you remember now?” Steve asked.

“Some,” he said. “Enough.”

Steve came at him, and he raised his arms defensively before he realized it was a hug, not an attack. Steve pulled him in tight, pressed his face into the crook of his neck and clung, and after a moment, Bucky put his own arms up and hung on right back. Steve smelled like soap and the graphite from his pencils, and just of himself underneath that, as familiar as anything he ever knew. 

They stood like that for a while-- Bucky lost track of time, a little-- until a car pulled up and a girl got out with a stack of pizzas. She looked at Steve and Bucky, still clinging to each other like drowning men. “Um,” she said. “Is this…?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Sam said, and muttered, “Try not to kill Captain America while I’m paying,” to Bucky under his breath. Steve hiccuped a laugh at that, but he didn’t let go.

They stumbled inside after Sam. Steve still didn’t seem quite willing to let go of Bucky, and Bucky didn’t really mind that at all. Steve herded him towards the couch, and Sam set the pizza boxes down on the battered footlocker they had in place of a coffee table.

“You look like hell, Buck,” Steve said. 

Bucky shrugged. “You’re not wrong.”

He didn’t quite know how to talk to Steve. Steve looked like he had about a thousand questions, but didn’t want to risk spooking him; he covered for it by offering Bucky first crack at the pizza. He inhaled most of a pie before slowing down. He hadn’t realized he’d been hungry.

Sam asked, “So where’ve you been hiding? And, don’t take this the wrong way, but how’d you know to come here?”

“Safehouse,” Bucky said, around a mouthful of food. “Widow tracked me down. Told me where you were.”

“Natasha did that?” Steve looked startled. “I owe her one.”

“She said that about you,” he said. “Guess you’re square.”

“Guess so,” said Steve.

They sat in silence for a little while, Bucky still eating methodically, Steve and Sam remembering to take a bite every once in while. Bucky surprised himself by stifling a yawn: he’d been sleeping like shit, with the nightmares, and he’d spent hours on the roof across the street. 

When Steve saw it, he said “If you’re tired-- if you want to stay-- take my room, the couch folds out, it’ll be fine--”

Bucky hesitated, but in the end agreed to it. When Steve got up to get blankets for the couch, Sam leaned forward on his elbows and said, “Look, man, I know Steve’s happy to see you and all, but if you flip out and try to kill him, you should know I’m gonna do my level best to take you down.”

“Good,” Bucky said. And then Steve came back, cutting off that conversation. 

It took a long time to fall asleep. The bed was too big, too soft; he was cold even under the comforter, and he was painfully aware of Steve in the next room. Bucky didn’t want to come flailing out of some nightmare and wake him up in the middle of the night. 

He did anyway, of course. Steve heard him cry out and burst in at a dead run, shield on his arm, and pulled up short when he saw Bucky alone and wild-eyed in the bed.

“Sorry,” Bucky panted, trying to stop his heart hammering in his chest. He’d been sitting in that chair, so fucking resigned to it that he hadn’t even struggled, and-- “Nightmare. Just-- just a nightmare.”

Steve sagged with relief. “Jesus, Buck,” he said. “You scared me.”

“I should go,” Bucky said, and Steve put the shield down.

“Don’t,” Steve said. “Please don’t-- I can stay, if it’ll help.”

“I’d hurt you,” Bucky said. “If I woke up like that again-- I could hurt you, and not know it.”

“You won’t,” Steve said, and he sounded so sure of it that Bucky wanted to believe him.

So Steve lay down next to him, and Bucky rolled over onto his side, facing away from Steve, and tried to act convincingly asleep. Steve must have bought it, because after a while he curled up behind Bucky and put out a hand to touch his back, just a little, as if he needed to reassure himself that Bucky was still there. 

It should have felt strange, having another person lying beside him. It should have felt like a threat. Instead it was strangely intimate, and shockingly familiar, and it made Bucky feel safe in a way he only dimly remembered. He fell asleep like that, between one breath and the next, and this time there were no nightmares.

In the morning, he drifted awake, not his usual hard snap into consciousness. He felt warm right through, down to his toes and the fingers of the hand he didn’t have any more. Steve had flung his arm around Bucky in the night and pulled him close, snugged up against him, his chin pressed to Bucky’s shoulder. He was breathing softly, evenly, and out of just-remembered habit Bucky listened for the old, familiar wheeze, now long gone.

When he pushed himself upright, Steve made a protesting noise before he woke up himself. “Mmph. Morning, Buck,” he said, and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. “Are, uh, are you staying?”

“I think so,” Bucky said. “For now.”

Staying meant Steve treating him like he was made of glass, and Sam treating him like a landmine. “You need to talk to someone,” he said, after the first few wary days, “and the army of trained attack therapists you actually need isn’t available, so it’s gonna be me or Steve.”

The thought of telling Steve what he’d done, what he’d become, made his throat dry up. “I’ll talk to you,” he croaked.

He ended up talking to the Widow more. She breezed in after he’d been there a week or so, and greeted him with, “So, you got up the nerve after all. I’m impressed.”

He scowled at her, but Sam laughed and Steve smiled, and she added “Wouldn’t mind picking your brain about the Hydra higher-ups, at some point. We know a lot, but you might be able to fill in some gaps.”

It was more like a debrief than a therapist, and that made it easier. The Widow-- “Call me Natasha,” she said easily-- was cool and professional, asking questions and taking the answers dispassionately. He gave her as much as he could, with his memories still scattershot-- every name he knew, every target he recalled-- and promised her as much of the rest as he could piece together.

“Do you feel guilty?” she asked at the end, and that surprised him. He had to think about the answer, and it surprised him too.

“No,” he said. “not the way I should. It’s too big. If I could pick out any one piece of it to feel guilty about, I would-- but I wouldn’t know where to start.” The best he could do was a sort of numb horror at the enormity of what he had done, and it was all of a piece with what had been done to him.

“I wish,” he said, and stopped. Natasha just looked at him, no judgement in her eyes at all, and he found the words. “I wish I’d fought it harder. I did, for so long, but eventually I got-- resigned to it, I guess. I forgot I’d ever been anything else. I shouldn’t have let them take that.”

“I don’t think they gave you a choice in the matter,” she said, and he supposed it was true. Still. He couldn’t shake the feeling.

She stayed for dinner, which surprised him. But then, she’d seemed to mean it about considering Steve a friend.

Over cartons of takeout, the three of them kept up an easy flow of conversation. Natasha was spearheading the public efforts to root out whatever remained of Hydra, and Steve teased her about how she was adjusting to her newfound fame. “Saw you in the Post again,” he said. “And the Express. And some of the supermarket tabloids.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, next to the one about how you knocked up a barista from Petworth and she’s having your super-baby.”

“I am really glad to be your non-famous, though devastatingly handsome and charming, friend,” Sam said solemnly. “Although I still wouldn’t say no to a new set of wings from Stark. Or an invite to one of his parties.”

“They’re highly overrated,” said Natasha. “Believe me.”

“Maybe you just need a better class of date for the next one,” Sam said, and Natasha smirked back at him in response.

Bucky ate in silence, and let the conversation wash over him. He didn’t mind. It was soothing in its way, like the good-natured back-and-forth between the Commandos during the war. He’d lost the trick of it, though, and he was surprised to find he missed it.

Later, when he and Steve were alone, he said, “Pretty sure Wilson wants to fuck the Widow.” 

Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “I think Sam likes Natasha, yeah,” he said. “I think maybe she likes him too.”

“She looks at him like Peggy used to look at you,” he said.

Steve got the look he got whenever Bucky talked about remembering something, like he wanted to do cartwheels but had to walk on eggshells instead. “Peggy’s still alive, you know,” he said. “I don’t know if I ever told you that. She’s-- not well, not really, but if you wanted to see her--”

“No,” Bucky said.

“It’d be tricky to get you there without anyone else recognizing you, maybe, but we could figure out--”

“I said no.” Steve’s face fell. “She thinks I’m dead. Better that way. Probably scare her to death if I showed up, anyway.”

“She’s stronger than you’d think,” Steve said. “She always was.”

But Bucky shook his head, and Steve dropped it.

That night, Bucky woke up, and it wasn’t from a nightmare. Not his nightmare, anyway. Steve was tense and twitching, breathing fast, the hand he usually pressed flat to Bucky’s sternum clenched into a tight fist. He made soft, distressed noises, and curled himself closer to Bucky as if doing so would ward off whatever he was dreaming of.

Bucky covered Steve’s fist with his hand, and gave it a shake. “Steve.” He didn’t wake. So Bucky twisted around to face Steve and shook his shoulder, saying his name again. “Steve, wake up.”

Steve’s eyes popped open, blank with fear for a moment, locking onto Bucky as soon as they focused. He relaxed all over, then, going loose with what looked to Bucky like relief. "Bucky?” he said.

“You were dreaming,” Bucky said.

Steve nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Nightmare. I still get ‘em, sometimes.”

It hadn’t occurred to Bucky that Steve would have nightmares. But that was stupid, he realized: Steve had his own share of bad memories, of ghosts that refused to fade. Maybe not so large a portion as him, but he was glad of that. Steve, of all people, didn’t deserve them.

Bucky said, “Roll over.” Steve frowned at him, curious, but he did it. With his back to Bucky he was vulnerable, an easy target. There was still a part of Bucky’s brain that thought that way, that knew exactly how much pressure he’d have to apply to snap Steve’s neck from this angle. Likely there always would be.

Bucky put his arm around Steve’s middle and pulled himself close, his chest pressed up along Steve’s back. He let his forehead rest on the back of Steve’s shoulder for a moment. “Better?” he asked.

Steve took a minute to answer. “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks, Buck.” He covered Bucky’s hand with his own, twining their fingers over Steve’s heart. He was asleep again in minutes. Bucky took longer.

In the morning, he woke up with his face mashed against the nape of Steve’s neck, feeling strange. He took stock: he wasn’t injured, didn’t feel hungry, hadn’t shook loose any disquieting new memories in the night--

Steve shifted in his sleep, his hips pressing back against Bucky’s. Bucky rocked forward a little into the touch, all muscle memory, before he realized what he was doing. Then he froze. He carefully disentangled himself from Steve, easing back and away from where Steve’s ass had been pressed up against his cock. 

He climbed out of bed as quietly as he could and went to the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He turned the shower on, and thought about getting in while the water was still cold. He didn’t. Instead he stood in the hot spray, stroking himself, and tried to remember what it had been like to feel this. He summoned up what memories he had of other hands on him, of a willing body pressed against him, of kisses and soft words and noises stifled so the neighbors wouldn’t hear through the thin walls. He had to muffle the noises he was making with his metal hand.

When he came, he went a little weak-kneed, sagged against the shower wall before he slid to the floor. It had been the thought of Steve that put him over the edge-- not an old, fractured memory, but the recent knowledge of how Steve’s body felt in his arms. 

He hadn’t realized, until he got it back, that he’d forgotten how to want.

Wanting Steve felt like a persistent tug beneath his breastbone, a dull ache that couldn’t be confused with pain at all. It was only the familiarity of it that hurt, and the uncertainty of what to do about it, and those were pains he hardly felt, so used to worse.

He’d keep silent about it forever, as much a coward as he ever was. If Steve noticed, he didn't say, or mistook it for a different piece of his old self slotting back into place. He caught Steve looking at him sometimes, schooling his features as best as he could, but Bucky could still read in them how badly Steve wanted him back as he had been. He thought Steve understood that it was never going to happen, no matter how much he remembered-- that he’d been too broken for too long-- but he supposed that knowing didn’t stop a man from wanting.

At least, Bucky thought, Sam was around to fill some of the gaps that Bucky couldn’t anymore. Sam was steady, like Bucky thought he might have been, once. He couldn’t begrudge Steve Sam’s friendship, though there was a time he might have, a time when he wanted to be all Steve needed. He knew he couldn’t be that, anymore. So he was glad of Sam.

That didn’t mean he was going to listen to Sam’s bad ideas, though. “I’m not saying you have to talk,” Sam said. “Sit in the back row, keep your mouth shut if you want. But it might help, to be there.”

“Unless you want your VA buddies to get a good look at how much worse they could have it, there’s not much point in me going,” Bucky said.

“Then come running with us some morning,” Sam said. “Go to the grocery store with Steve. Volunteer at the damn animal shelter, I don’t care, but you need to get outdoors.”

“No, I don’t,” Bucky said.

“Man, I don’t know how you’re not going stir-crazy,” said Sam. “This is not that big a house.”

“Bigger than a cryo chamber,” Bucky said, and that shut Sam up for a while.

The truth was, just going this long without having his brain wiped felt like an unheard-of luxury. Having that, and self-determination, and Steve-- it would be tempting fate to ask for more. He supposed the house would start to feel claustrophobic eventually, but right now it felt _safe_ , like he hardly remembered ever feeling. If there was a world outside, he didn’t have to worry about it. If his past came calling, he could turn it away at the door.

In large part, that was thanks to Steve. Steve was about as public as public figures got, and after the spectacle of Hydra’s takedown, anyone holding a grudge wanted to stay well clear of the enormous spotlight Steve lived in. 

“Sunlight makes the best disinfectant,” Steve told Bucky, “and anyway, I’ve got an understanding with the press.” Sam explained that Steve had methodically dismantled a reporter’s camera and pitched the pieces into traffic on 16th Street, some blocks away, after his requests to leave the house alone had not been sufficiently respected. He still ended up on Instagram every time he went anywhere, but that was part of what kept him safe. What was keeping Bucky safe, right now.

When Bucky thought about living under that kind of scrutiny-- of his history being public knowledge, his face as recognizable as Steve’s-- his blood ran cold. Let the world remember him by his museum memorial, by the time-polished recountings of the Commandos in the history books. On some unspoken level, he wanted to preserve the memory of James Barnes, the faithful soldier, the fallen friend, unsullied by the blood on his hands.

He couldn’t hide forever, though. 

He got a month, a month to recover what he could of himself, a month of Steve to steady him by day and ward off his nightmares, a month to come to terms with what he’d been, and what he’d have to carry. It wasn’t enough, but another seventy years wouldn’t have been enough either.

Steve and Sam came back from their run with Natasha in tow, one morning, and they looked serious. “People are starting to ask questions,” Natasha told him. “Well, they’ve been asking, but I’m running out of dodges. Your code name’s in enough of the Hydra files we released, and linked to enough of what happened, that people want to know who you are and where you went.”

Bucky felt numb, like he hadn’t for a while. “Tell ‘em I’m dead,” he said. “Tell ‘em I went down with the carriers.” It was close enough to the truth, anyway: in some sense, that was where the Winter Soldier stopped and what was left of Bucky Barnes started again.

But Sam shook his head. “They’ve been over that wreckage with a fine-tooth comb,” he said. “And they dredged the hell out of the Potomac, for bodies and debris and Steve’s shield and what-all. No metal-armed corpses accounted for.”

“They’re asking me to testify on the Hill again,” Steve said. “I’d tell them all of it if you said the word, Buck. If the whole story was known, they couldn’t touch you without looking like the worst sorts of bullies.”

Bucky managed a bitter little smile for Steve. “You think the public’d be on my side? They’d be calling for my head, if they knew everything I’ve done. Wouldn’t be wrong to do it, either.”

“There’s another option,” Natasha said. “Fury could use some backup overseas. You’d be in the wind with him, about as low-profile as it gets. And maybe clean up some of Hydra’s messes, while you’re at it.”

That was tempting. He wasn’t above revenge, not by a long shot. There was an appeal to the idea of using what Hydra had forced on him to hunt them down and take them out. He had debts that wanted settling.

But it would mean leaving any chance at a life lived out of the shadows, and it would mean leaving Steve. Steve was ill-suited to the kind of work two dead men could accomplish, even if he was willing to go. And Bucky didn’t want to ask that of him.

He looked at Sam, who hadn’t offered an opinion. “What about you?” Bucky asked him. “Got any suggestions?”

Sam shrugged. “Depends on what you want,” he said. “It’s your call to make.”

Bucky shook his head. “It’s too big,” he said. “I need to think about it.”

“Clock’s ticking, Barnes,” Natasha said. “But I can carve out a couple more days.”

When they turned in for the night, Steve looked like he had something on his mind. “Spit it out,” Bucky told him, but Steve still seemed uncertain.

“If you have to go,” Steve said, “I’ll understand. I can’t say I won’t miss you like hell, but if it’s what you need, go with Fury. I just-- I think you deserve better, is all.”

He was wrong, but it warmed Bucky a little to know that Steve believed it. Steve had always thought Bucky was better than he really was. “If I thought I’d get better than a black-box prison, maybe,” he said. “But I’m no use to anyone in one of those, and you’re dreaming if you think the Winter Soldier’s going to get a handshake and a medal.”

He’d said his piece. He pulled the covers up over him and rolled over, away from Steve. After a minute, Steve got in next to him, spooned up behind him like he usually did. With the lights out, it could have been Steve’s quarters in London, except that the bed was too big and they weren’t likely to kiss and there was too much bloody history in Bucky’s head.

Bucky thought Steve had fallen asleep, but he spoke, a soft murmur into Bucky’s hair. “I wish you didn’t think you had to be of use,” he said. “You don’t owe anyone a damned thing. Not repentance, and not service, and not guilt.”

Bucky sighed. Steve was too stubborn to think anything but the best of him, even now. And he didn’t understand that Bucky owed the kind of blood debts you couldn’t ever repay; that the work Fury offered wouldn’t come close to balancing them. “If Fury needs me, that’s better than nothing,” he said. “Being needed’s better than nothing.”

“Fury doesn’t need you,” Steve said.

“Then what use am I?” Bucky asked.

Steve was silent, for a while. Bucky figured he’d won the argument. But he ought to have remembered that Steve was the brave one, and always had been. 

He felt Steve take a breath, deep, like he was preparing to leap from some great height. “I need you,” he said, all in a rush. “I do, Buck. Don’t go.”

Bucky went absolutely still, the kind of motionless he'd learned to be to pull a trigger between breaths, to make the shots that kept Steve safe in the war. He felt Steve's arm around him slacken. "Bucky?" Steve said.

Bucky twisted, a swift efficient movement he hadn't learned in the war at all. One neat flip, that left Steve on his back and Bucky's weight pinning him to the too-soft bed. Bucky braced himself above Steve, the distance between them scant inches. "Steve, you idiot," he told him. "You could have _said_."

The kiss was rough, hungry, Steve as urgent as he was. Bucky remembered this-- Steve's hands on his face, carding through his hair, the way he bit at Bucky's mouth. Bucky broke the kiss long enough to trail his mouth along Steve's jaw, to worry at the spot below his ear that used to make Steve crazy. It still did.

"Ah!" Steve said, and then, "God, I was-- I was so damned scared you didn't remember."

Bucky paused. "You thought I remembered the rest of it, and not this?" he asked.

Steve made what attempt at a shrug he could, with Bucky's hands on his shoulders. "You didn't seem to want to talk about it. Or anything else. And I guess it was dumb, but I was afraid of finding out you didn't have it back."

Bucky kissed Steve again, softer this time. "It was dumb," he said, "but I think only 'cause I brought all the stupid back with me."

Steve lit up at that, a smile like the sun, and Bucky would do anything, _anything_ , to put that look on Steve's face. For Steve, he'd be front-page news if that was what it took.

They kissed for a long time, just relearning how they felt to each other. Steve wasn't ticklish everywhere he'd been in the old days, and Bucky didn't much like Steve touching his metal arm. But then Steve traced the scars around the join with his tongue, and Bucky went hard as a rock and felt his spine turn to jelly.

"Fuck," Bucky panted. It was almost too much, after so long. He needed a moment to breathe, to get used to feeling so much. But he didn't want to stop.

He was good at thinking quickly, at his body knowing what to do ahead of his brain, so he started kissing his way down Steve's chest. When he got past Steve's navel, he paused for a moment and said "When's the last time we had a bed this big and no one to overhear us?"

Steve looked down at him, eyes a little glazed, and after a minute he focused enough to answer. "I don't think-- did we, ever?"

"Not so's I can recall," Bucky said. "Though that doesn't mean much. But if you don't remember it either, we probably never did."

He hooked his fingers in the elastic of Steve's shorts and tugged them lower, mouthing at the crease of his hip. Steve tipped his head back, panting, and said--voice a little breathy-- "Sam's still down the hall."

"Natasha stayed over tonight," Bucky said. "Don't worry about Sam."

Steve still wasn't all that loud while Bucky sucked him off, too used to having to keep quiet. But he said Bucky's name, over and over, and he tugged at Bucky's hair just enough to feel good. So that was all right.

Bucky could tell that Steve was close, from the way the soft choked-off noises he made grew more urgent, and then Steve said "God, Bucky, _fuck_ me, please, I need it--" and he came with a cry and a shudder.

Bucky sat up. "You mean that?" he asked.

"'Course I do," Steve said. "Get up here." He tugged Bucky back up to kiss him, and Bucky got lost in that for a little while, in Steve's mouth on his, Steve's hands on his body. But he ached with wanting, now, and he didn't have to for a minute longer. "Turn over," he told Steve.

It wasn't that he couldn't remember having done this. He could, just fine-- remembered feeling Steve's body under and around him, remembered moving with him, remembered kissing the salt from the back of Steve's sweat-damp neck. He'd held those memories close as soon as he got them back. But he was discovering that what he remembered didn't hold a candle to actually being there, in that moment.

When Bucky pushed into Steve he had to hold himself still for a minute, squeezing his eyes shut, trying not to go off right there. Steve wasn't going to wait, though. He rocked back against Bucky, taking him deeper, making Bucky swear and clutch Steve's hips. They found a rhythm quickly, easy and natural, like there wasn't a lifetime-long gap in their history.

It was blinding, how good it felt. Bucky knew he wasn't going to last too long. He plastered himself along Steve's back, changing the angle enough to make Steve moan and arch under him. Steve was hard again, so Bucky started to stroke his cock in time with his thrusts. That wrung the best kinds of noises out of Steve, made him pump his hips faster, and it wasn't long at all before Bucky felt him tense and shudder and come apart around him.

Feeling Steve's body do that was about all it took, for Bucky: he managed to jerk his hips once, twice more and that was it, he was gone, something that might have been Steve's name caught in his mouth as he came.

Steve collapsed onto the mattress, then, and Bucky rolled off him and onto his side. He fit an arm around Steve and pulled him in close. In a minute he'd have to get up, find a couple of washcloths and maybe some clean sheets, but for that moment all he wanted was to listen to Steve as his breathing slowed down, and feel the sparks still flickering in his body.

"I'll stay," he told Steve. "I'll try the sunlight route. But if things go south--"

"They won't," Steve said. "And if it came to it, I'd run with you. As far as we needed to go."

That was good enough for Bucky. Politicians, the press, the public: he didn't trust them to see what Steve saw in him. But he didn't need to, so long as he trusted Steve. He thought that maybe that was the thing they'd never been able to root out, when he had been the Soldier: he'd been sure of Steve, on some level, and maybe that had never gone away.

In the morning, he unwrapped himself from around Steve only with reluctance, but his stomach was grumbling. He padded down the hall, aiming for the kitchen. Natasha, slipping out of Sam's room, beat him to the stairs.

She gestured him ahead of her, but Bucky shook his head. "Ladies first, right?" he said. 

She quirked an eyebrow at that, but let it pass. They fixed themselves breakfast in companionable silence. Natasha didn't speak ‘til they'd both sat down with bowls of cold cereal. "So I'm guessing you're not taking Fury's offer," she said.

"That obvious?" Bucky said. He probably did broadcast his unexpected good fortune pretty loud, to someone like Natasha.

"Little bit," she told him. "Took you long enough."

"Hey," he said, but Natasha only smiled.

"I'm glad," she said. "He looks at you like you hung the moon, and I can tell he's the sun in your sky."

"That's poetic of you," he said.

She shrugged. "Been figuring out I might like to be be someone who's poetic," she said. "At least every once in a while."

"How's Sam like poetry?" Bucky asked.

"Who said I was doing it for Sam?" Natasha replied, and them neatly changed the subject. "You thought about how you're going to handle going public?"

"Dunno," he said. "Offer useful intel and hope I don't qualify for a court-martial anymore, I guess."

"I think we can do a little better than that," Natasha said. "You've got to give people a bit of a show. Tell them a story. And use enough of the truth that they believe every word you say."

So that was how Bucky ended up in an uncomfortable chair and an even more uncomfortable Army dress uniform, just outside the doors of a Congressional hearing. He was wearing more medals than he remembered earning, and his head felt light and bare after his first haircut in half a century. It felt like a costume, or an old suit he'd outgrown. He got the occasional odd look from passersby, but he kept his head down, eyes fixed on the phone in his hand, watching the C-SPAN stream of the room on the other side of the doors. In there, shiny with his own assortment of medals and ribbons, Steve was telling a story.

He'd started out recounting the stuff the history books knew about Bucky Barnes. No one quite seemed to know where he was going with it, though, 'til he told them about Zola's experiments with the serum, and that Bucky had been one such test subject. That hadn't made it to the history books, and the room went quiet.

You could have heard a pin drop, after Steve said "We think that's why he survived the fall in the Alps."

One of the politicians cleared her throat. "Captain Rogers, are you saying that Sergeant Barnes is _alive_?"

"I am," Steve said.

"I thought you were here to testify about the Winter Soldier," said a man with a general's stripes.

"I am," Steve said.

Bucky had to stifle a laugh. Steve had learned a thing or two selling war bonds. He knew how to hook an audience, how to carry them along with him to the destination he'd picked out in advance. Natasha had helped him, too, showing him where to tell the truth flat-out and where to elide it so you couldn't see the missing pieces.

Steve didn't flinch from describing what had been done to Bucky, though the audience flinched to hear it. "He spent seventy years being brutalized and tortured," Steve said. "He was forced to forget anything but the orders Hydra gave him. He killed, yes, but the blood is on the hands of the people who held him captive."

The room was rapt, silent. Even Bucky found himself thinking that anything Steve said with such conviction had to be true. That had always been Steve's particular gift: he could make people believe that they were better than they knew themselves to be, and act accordingly. Bucky had spent so long in Steve's orbit that it wasn't hard to get back into the habit of it. He hoped it could work half as well on the hearing, the reporters, the people watching in their homes.

"And he still saved my life, despite all that," Steve said. "He pulled me out of the Potomac, and he clawed his memories back, and he's not going to be anyone's weapon again." Bucky sent up a fervent prayer, though he doubted there was anyone who'd take it, that he could prove this true.

"Captain Rogers," said a senator, "are you saying you know the Winter Soldier's current whereabouts?"

"I'm saying the Winter Soldier's gone," Steve told them, and smiled like the sun. "But Bucky Barnes has been holed up at my place for a month or so. He's waiting just outside right now, actually. Would you like to meet him?"

That was his cue. Bucky stood, tucking the phone into his pocket, and opened the doors to the hearing room. Every face in there was turned towards him, and after a second the camera flashes started going off so fast there wasn't any pause between them.

Bucky walked up the aisle and sat down next to Steve. The reporters crowded in, shouting questions, and the senators and soldiers that sat facing them didn't seem to know what to say. For a moment, Bucky didn't either, but then he felt Steve's hand on his shoulder, a steady, familiar comfort, and he remembered the part he needed to play.

He leaned forward into the microphone. "Hello," he said, and the catch in his voice was real. "It's good to be back."

EPILOGUE

There was a hardware store a mile or so from the house, on the Maryland side, and it was an easy jog on a nice day. Bucky walked in and headed for the paint aisle, where he spent twenty minutes making a decision. 

On his way out, someone said "'Scuse me, sir?" 

It was a couple of kids in fatigues, looking too damned young. The girl had her hair pulled back in a too-tight bun, and the boy was all Adam's apple, and they both looked starry-eyed at him as the boy said, "Sorry to bother you, but are you...?"

"Yeah," Bucky said, "I am," and he plastered on a smile that didn't look too much like a wince when they asked for a selfie with him.

"You been over yet?" he asked, and they both shook their heads.

"First tour's in a month," the girl said.

"Well, stay safe, both of you," he said.

"Thanks, sir,” said the boy-- had Bucky ever been that young? He didn't remember it, but that didn't mean much. "It's an honor to meet you."

"The honor's all mine," Bucky said.

When he got home, Steve was still out. Sam was there, though, which he'd been hoping for. He thrust the bag from the hardware store at Sam, and when Sam saw its contents his eyebrows went up.

"You sure this is a good idea, man?" he asked. "It's not a permanent fix, and Stark already offered--"

"I don't want all his bells and whistles," Bucky said. "This'll do me fine."

"Your call," Sam said, and took the roll of painter's tape out of the bag. "But you're not allowed to get mad if I screw up. Actually, Nat's coming over in a bit, maybe you should let her--"

"It's fine," Bucky said. "You do it."

Steve and Natasha arrived a few hours later, not long after Bucky and Sam had finished cleaning up. "Why is there paint on the lawn?" Steve asked when he came in. "Nat got it on her shoes."

"Sorry," Bucky said to Natasha, who waved it off. "It's spray enamel. Had an art project." And he turned to show them his left shoulder.

Steve's eyes went wide. He reached out to touch, but Bucky drew back. "Still wet," he said. "Should be fine by tonight."

When it was time for them to turn in, Steve surprised Bucky by tackling him onto the bed, startling a whuff of air out of him. "Can I?" Steve asked, eyes flicking to his shoulder.

"Go nuts," Bucky told him. Steve ran his fingers over the star there, which had for too long been red but now was white, a twin to the one on Steve's shield. "Like it?" 

"'Course I do," Steve said, and kissed him, slow and lingering. Things sped up from there.

After, they pulled the blankets over them. Steve was curled up around Bucky, tonight, his hand covering the white star on Bucky's shoulder. "G'night," Steve murmured in Bucky's ear. “You warm enough?”

"Mm,” Bucky said back, already drifting off. “Yeah. You’re a hell of a lot better than a hot water bottle.” Steve laughed softly at the old joke.

Bucky thought, briefly, about how cold he could remember being, and for how long, but he pushed the thought away, and pulled Steve's arms tighter around him.

THE END


	2. bonus epilogue: irc.howlingcap.org

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> barnestormer: all you assholes turn on c-span RIGHT THE FUCK NOW

_welcome to #capchat! please don't say anything Cap wouldn't approve of._

_barnestormer has joined the room_

**barnestormer** : jesus fucking christ

 **barnestormer** : all you assholes turn on c-span RIGHT THE FUCK NOW

 **howlin_gal** : what? why?

 **missileannie** : isn’t Cap testifying about the DC shitshow today? what’s he saying?

 **barnestormer** : idk what the fuck is going on

 **barnestormer** : but he sat down and started telling, like, a rambling grandpa story about sgt barnes

 **elcapitano** : holy shitballs are you guys watching this???

 **barnestormer** : and then he said that barnes got the super-soldier serum while he was a POW

 **barnestormer** : which is why

 **barnestormer** : AND I QUOTE

 **elcapitano** : oh my fucking god, you guys

 **barnestormer** : “that’s why he survived the fall in the alps.”

 **missileannie** : are you shitting me?

 **howlin_gal** : what the fuck, someone link me a stream

 **howlin_gal** : i can’t get into the c-span website, it keeps timing out

 **barnestormer** : jesus christ. jesus CHRIST, this is the worst thing i’ve ever heard

 **elcapitano** : is Cap seriously saying the maniac with the metal arm who shot up half of DC

 **missileannie** : just mass emailed the entire forum to tell them they need to get to a tv ASfuckingAP

 **elcapitano** : is actually bucky barnes?

 **barnestormer** : apparently, yeah

 **howlin_gal** : someone fucking update me, i’m at work and there’s no tv

_wreckofthevalkyrie has joined the room_

_whitestarline has joined the room_

**wreckofthevalkyrie** : you guys WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING

 **barnestormer** : it keeps getting worse

 **barnestormer** : how does it keep getting worse

 **howlin_gal** : SOMEONE. UPDATE. ME.

 **whitestarline** : howlin_gal, Cap just told congress that sgt barnes was found by russian soldiers, brainwashed, memory-wiped, and turned into an assassin

 **whitestarline** : and that he’s had hydra forcing him to kill for them for decades

 **whitestarline** : and everyone in my entire fucking office is huddled around c-span right now but i had to go cry in my cubicle

 **wreckofthevalkyrie** : this is like listening to a fucking greek tragedy, jesus

 **elcapitano** : how is this even possible

 **elcapitano** : he’d be like a hundred, how did he blow up half of adams morgan

 **missileannie** : apparently cryogenic suspension is a real thing that exists????

 **howlin_gal** : wait wait so he was frozen like cap was??

 **barnestormer** : when he wasn’t having his brain electrocuted or murdering people, apparently he was frozen, yeah

 **barnestormer** : i need to go hug my dog or something. christ.

_dumdumdan has joined the room_

**dumdumdan** : WHAT THE FUCK

 **barnestormer** : I KNOW

 **missileannie** : SERIOUSLY

 **dumdumdan** : are we sure this is even for real? could Cap just have lost it somehow?

 **elcapitano** : shut your fucking mouth, dan

 **dumdumdan** : sorry!

 **dumdumdan** : just, that would almost be better than Cap having to fight his amnesiac best friend to the death

 **howlin_gal** : shit is he dead? did Cap say he was dead?

 **whitestarline** : he doesn’t sound like he’s talking about someone who’s dead

 **wreckofthevalkyrie** : fuck now i’m crying

 **barnestormer** : i don’t think he’s dead, Cap just said he’s the one who pulled him out of the river

 **howlin_gal** : thank fuck

 **dumdumdan** : does that mean he’s wandering around somewhere with no memory and a metal murder arm?

 **barnestormer** : did he just

 **barnestormer** : HE DID

 **whitestarline** : SHIT, SON

 **dumdumdan** : well that answers my question

 **missileannie** : oh my god OH MY GOD LOOK AT HIM

 **elcapitano** : jesus christ i can’t even believe this is happening

 **howlin_gal** : ????????????????????

 **wreckofthevalkyrie** : sgt barnes just walked into the fucking hearing, howlin_gal

 **howlin_gal** : holy shit

 **howlin_gal** : does he look okay?

 **barnestormer**. yeah. yeah. kind of like he hasn’t slept in a year, but okay.

 **dumdumdan** : holy shit, you see his hand?

 **whitestarline** : i just looked at twitter

 **whitestarline** : their servers must be bursting into flames

 **missileannie** : look at how happy Cap is

 **barnestormer** : i know, i’ve only seen him grin like that in newsreels

 **whitestarline** : aaaaaand i’m crying again, thanks jerks

 **elcapitano** : I need a fucking drink.

 **wreckofthevalkyrie** : sgt barnes probably needs one more

 **dumdumdan** : if that man has to pay for an alcoholic beverage ever again in his life, america is not the country i thought it was

 **howlin_gal** : i need a drink and a youtube link. fuck.

 **barnestormer** : a fucking men to that. someone better call the mods, the forum’s gonna spin around and explode any minute now

 **barnestormer** : jesus. sgt barnes.

 **barnestormer** : who’d have ever fucking thought.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to lurrel for beta!


End file.
